A
Brief History of Cannabis

Contents

The drugs history of colonial Britain, is examined in this article, including the rise of the prohibitionist movement, and their battle with the free-trade movement. Also featured is the background to the famous Indian Hemp Drugs commission.

Victor Lacata - a rush to judgement An investigation into the story of Victor Lacata who, it was claimed, was driven mad by his use of cannabis and murdered his whole family with an axe, proving to be the most famous and enduring stories underpinning Reefer Madness.
By The Reefer Madnes Museum

Since
cannabis is the only plant on the planet that yields both a drug and a useful
fiber its no surprise that it has been used for thousands of years. A Chinese
treatise on pharmacology attributed to the Emperor Shen Nung and alleged to date
from 2737 B.C. contains probably the earliest reference to cannabis and its potential
as a medicine. Other early references to cannabis come from India in the Atharva
Vedafrom the second millennium BC and from tablets from the Royal Library of Ashurbanipal,
an Assyrian King, who live around 650 BC

The
ancient Greeks used alcohol rather than cannabis as a recreational drug but they
traded with cannabis eating and inhaling peoples. Hence some of the references
in Homer may be to cannabis- including Homer's reference to the drug which Helen
brought to Troy from Egyptian Thebes. Certainly Herodotus was referring to cannabis
when he wrote in 5 BC that the Scythians cultivated a plant that grew like flax
but grew thicker and taller; this hemp they deposited upon red-hot stones in a
close rooms producing a vapor. Herodotus noted, "that no Grecian vapour-bath
can surpass. The Scythians, transported by the vapor, shout aloud".

Herodotus also described people
living on islands who "meet together in companies" throw cannabis on
a fire, then "sit around in a circle; and by inhaling the fruit that has
been thrown on, they become intoxicated by the odour, just as the Greeks do by
wine; and more fruit is thrown on, the more intoxicated they become, until they
rise up and dance and betake themselves to singing." Other passages from
Pliny, Marco Polo, Abu Mansur Muwaffaq and The Arabian Nights show that cannabis
was cultivated both for its fibre and for its psychoactive properties throughout
Asia and the Near East from the earliest known times.

The
date on which cannabis was introduced to Europe is unknown; but it must have been
very early. An urn containing cannabis leaves and seeds, unearthed near Berlin,
is believed to date from 500 BC

Cloth
made from hemp was common in central and southern Europe in the 13 century and
remained popular with succeeding generations. Fine Italian linen was made from
hemp as well as flax and in many cases the two were mixed in the same material.
Nor were the Europeans ignorant of the recreational potential of cannabis; Francois
Rabelais (1490-1553) gave a full account of what he called "the herb Pantagruelion"

The usage of cannabis also
spread quite early to Africa, many years before Europeans moved into the country.
The plant is smoked by Suto women in South Africa before giving birth, they also
grind up the seeds with bread or mealie pap and give it children when they are
being weaned. A report in 1916 noted that south African mine workers were encouraged
to smoke because "after a smoke the native work hard and show very little
fatigue". The usual mine practice was to allow three smokes resembling coffee
brakes a day. Further north the lives of some tribes in the Congo centre on Cannabis,
which is cultivated, smoked regularly and venerated. Whenever the tribe travels
it takes the Riamba (a huge calabash pipe more than a yard in diameter) with it.
Any man committing a misdeed is condemned to smoke until he passes out.

Cannabis occupies fourth place
in worldwide popularity among the mind-affecting drugs - preceded only by caffeine,
nicotine and alcohol. As in the cases of caffeine, nicotine and alcohol, attempt
have been made to suppress the trade in cannabis and to eradicate its use. Emir
Soudom Sheikhouni of Joneima in Arabia is said to have ordered in 1378 that all
cannabis plants in his territory be destroyed and that anyone caught eating cannabis
have their teeth pulled out. But 15 years after the Emir's decree the use of cannabis
had increased. No successful effort to suppress cannabis has ever existed and
in 1969 the UN estimated that there were between 200,000,000 and 250,000,000 cannabis
users in the world.

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UKCIA does not encourage anyone to grow or use cannabis. The aim of the site is as an information resource which will help people fight the injustice of prohibition with the strongest of weapons: Knowledge.